Scholarship Honor Brunch 2017

Scholarship donors, recipients honored at annual brunch

Saturday, April 8, 2017

Marshall University donors and current recipients of privately funded scholarships were honored today at the Scholarship Honor Brunch in the Memorial Student Center’s Don Morris Room on the Huntington campus.

Zach Moore, a member of the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine’s Class of 2018, spoke to the group.

“I’ve come to believe that the American dream only works if we make it work,” Moore said. “The people in this room are an embodiment of a will to make it work, people who have come to pursue an education and others who have come to support their efforts with their time, money, praise, and relationships. This bolsters my faith that these endeavors will continue to be rewarded, because efforts like these make it so.”

Tori Burdette, a graduating senior in health sciences from Charleston, West Virginia, who received a Masonic scholarship, also attended the brunch in order to thank donors.

“I am so thankful for the opportunity to pursue my education with the support of the donors,” Burdette said. “Without their support, none of us in this room would be where we are today. I’m proud to say that because of their generosity, I’m graduating this May and have been accepted into a master’s program here at Marshall. My dreams are becoming reality all because the donors believed in me; I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“For many of our scholarship students, college is a blind leap of faith,” said Dr. Ron Area, CEO of the Marshall University Foundation, which sponsored the event for the donors. “They do not necessarily begin college with a scholarship. You are also taking a blind leap of faith, assuming that the recipient of the scholarship attends class, studies hard and gets good grades. Scholarships do more than open financial doors; they provide support in terms of confidence that someone believes in them. You help them realize that this leap of faith will be remembered as a stepping stone on their path to higher achievement.”

Today’s event is an annual observance at which donors and scholarship recipients are able to meet each other.

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Photos: (Above) Scholarship recipients at Marshall University pose at the annual brunch April 8. (Below) Zach Moore, a recipient of a scholarship at the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, addressed the group at Marshall’s Scholarship Brunch April 8.

To see more pictures from the 2017 Scholarship Honor Brunch, please click here.